


Carnea

by Gray_Days



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-03
Updated: 2013-01-03
Packaged: 2017-11-23 11:52:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/621832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gray_Days/pseuds/Gray_Days
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From above, Celadon City at night sparkles like a jewel against the darkness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Carnea

From above, Celadon City at night would sparkle like a jewel against the darkness.

In every street hang endless lanterns, crisscrossing overhead between the facing buildings: traditional paper lanterns, both round and in surprisingly fanciful shapes, glittering strings of white or multicolored Christmas lights, antique glass-fronted brass oil lamps, all casting the streets into bright yellow light that swallows the stars overhead. The brightness is such that it's possible to feel the heat coming off the bulbs and lampwicks above.

When the sun sets, the lights go on, string by string. Nighttime is when the darker half of the city comes out. Slowly the streets and businesses fill with the noise of people indulging themselves: talking, laughter, the breaking of a glass. Beyond a wall drenched with plum blossoms, a shamisen begins to play. Flowers are everywhere, dripping off walls and balconies, spreading from their beds to be trampled underfoot in the streets, in patterns on the kimonos of the women who lounge on every street corner, their lips stained hibiscus-red.

Flowers even make it onto the facades of the buildings as names and faintly (or explicitly) suggestive appellations: the Gilded Lily Inn, the Rangiku no Terihakyougen (Disordered Chrysanthemum Theater), the Keshi (Chinese Poppy) House. The women on the street corners in blossom-colored robes fallen like disordered petals are called by their clientele "Celadon's flowers".

The populace's nickname for Celadon's Game Corner, however, is "Utsubotto" -- Victreebel. The sound of cascading coins and the amber light spilling from its entrance lure in customers from across the city to enter, marvel, and be absorbed into the lurid dream of a big win, emptying their pockets and their pocketbooks in pursuit of that shared delusion into the slot machines and the card tables, coins sliding across green felt and through their fingers into the establishment's waiting pitcher. It's rumored among the savvier of the locals that the place is backed by the mob, and it's certainly true that it's not uncommon for its customers to be left broke and broken by the pull of the jackpot dream. The only explanation, it's concluded, for why their princess Erika hasn't driven them out of the city is that she's made a truce with them, allowing them to do their business there so long as they abide by her rules. Her arrows are deadly in reply to disobedience.

Past Utsubotto are the neighborhoods where League justice turns a blind eye, where backdoor deals on goods and services of questionable nature are made. The Game Corner has to maintain at least a facade of gentility; these businesses make no such presumptions. The prostitutes here are less false geisha and more hollow-eyed, thin and sharp and cynical. The smell of burning opium hangs in a miasma in the alleys and mixes with other odors less pleasant or discernible. The names of these businesses aren't displayed above their doors as they are elsewhere, but they're chosen with a strong sense of irony: Manjushageran (曼珠沙華魁 – a pun between "belladonna" [曼珠沙華] and "whore" [華魁]), Keshi no Hakaba (Chinese Poppy Graveyard), Raga no Terihakyougen (Naked Bud Theater). Most, however, have no names at all.

Safer instead to remain in the bright and open causeways where the music of five different players from five different buildings mixes and overlays through the quieting vegetation. Follow where the flowers grow most thickly and you'll find yourself before the Celadon City Gym, though it looks more like some odd combination of a greenhouse and a Shinto shrine. Only women are permitted inside. Any man who tries to enter will find himself hopelessly ensnared in the thickly-growing vines, able only to retreat.

Past the vines that press against the glass to heights of more than sixteen feet are the gardens, laid out by season. The Pokemon that live here, seemingly wild, are almost indistinguishable from their surroundings. A clump of lush grass at the base of a bamboo thicket uproots itself and bathes its bulbose body in the moonlight shining through the roof. A miniature pine shifts to reveal a Torterra underneath. The huge, dark fronds of an ancient Shiftry flutter in the barely-perceptible breeze, allowing bars of moonlight to settle glowing-white on a field of Jumpluff.

At the center of it all is Erika, Celadon's beautiful princess. In the moonlight she looks like she's made of porcelain, an exquisite doll in silk kimono dusted silver with narcotic pollen from Gloom and Vileplume. Her gaze is odd and half-lidded as she composes an ikebana arrangement with delicate fingers. Around her lie her girls in an indistinct tangle of flesh and fabric, white thighs mingling with white snowflake silk and pale lips slightly parted. They shift occasionally, giggling and touching, half-asleep in drugged abandon. Long black hair falls and puddles on the ground like water.

Erika watches it all, her hands moving independently of her gaze, a faint smile on her red, red lips.


End file.
